2.1 Introduction

Entrepreneurial companies, which today seem to account for most high-tech ventures, require significant amounts of funding over long periods of time before they begin generating revenue. The lion s share of the money is spent on the salaries of technical workers as well as supporting incidentals such as development tools and test equipment. As such, technical management is critical in order to ensure the efficient use of technical resources in the completion of products, yet many decisions regarding a project s direction are not, and should not be based upon technology alone. Business concerns figure prominently in guiding the development effort, as will be seen. A conceptual business model that illuminates the surrounding environment that encompasses all development activity is now presented.

2.2 Company model

If a company could be represented in mathematical terms, Figure 2.1 would be its embodiment. This model illustrates a complete business system where each component can be thought of as a link in a chain. Each link contributes equally to the success, or demise, of the business as a whole. Components act as multipliers with each one taking on a value between 0 and 1, with the value being dependent upon how well the function is performed.

Figure 2.1: In this mathematical representation of a business where components are considered equal in importance, each component can take on a value between 0 and 1 depending on the contribution each component makes toward meeting market need.

A perfect requirements definition would result in multiplying input...